


something i said

by todareistodo



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, Light Angst and Smut, M/M, not really angst between jan and harry they are happy x
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 16:43:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20781800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todareistodo/pseuds/todareistodo
Summary: Jan’s not sure who he supports anymore, thinks about it sometimes in the shower, wonders if there’s one he loves with that extra inch of heart and decides that it must be something that comes in retirement, when his bones creak too much to raise his knee above a few inches, and the only satisfaction he can find is in a club that exists for himthe new season brings its tensions but, with harry, jan thinks he’ll be just fine





	something i said

**Author's Note:**

> absolutely no comment on any players or the current situation at spurs intended, mere artistic inspiration from something shitty x

Toby glares at him when he asks why he’s following Chris to his room instead of Jan’s. Jan has to squeeze his lips between his teeth and chew on the edges of them not to giggle at the way his hands are perched on his hips, face screaming he’s unimpressed. He sinks the edges of his teeth in a little too harshly and swears in violent, blood-flavoured Dutch when he releases them.

“Because your little puppy dog has bagged you first.” Toby rolls his eyes, and Jan knows it’s just Toby’s infallible bluntness, so he giggles aloud this time.

“Didn’t know you guys bought me a pet.” He teases, half-shouting across a hotel lobby because they may be over 30, but they’re still the two boys at Germinal Beerschot who shared their hair gel in the locker room.

Toby raises his eyebrows, waving Eriksen away who trots off with a shake of his head and a rattle of suitcase wheel against smooth marble flooring. He gestures with his head, little tip to the side that does nothing to disturb the carefully set strands of his hair, to Winks, who’s leaning against the reception desk, track top tied around his waist half inside out. Jan smiles fondly.

“Yes.” Toby says primly, maybe at the way Jan’s eyes crinkled. “Enjoy.” He smiles, at the very least, and Jan grins back, even sliding his glasses down his nose to wink at Toby and that makes him laugh, so Jan considers it a victory.

“Hi.” Winks beams breathlessly, all boyish cologne and every tooth showing. “Thought it’d be fun if we roomed together.”

Jan smiles down at him, expression always hopeful and always happy, unless he’s riling himself up for a yellow and then it’s just amusing, because as much as his dark thick eyebrows could be intimidating, shadowing his freckles they’re really not. He ruffles Harry’s hair, even though he knows he hates that and sure enough he brushes it back into place, huffing.

“I would love to.” He teases, wrapping an arm around Harry’s neck tight enough to feel his throat constrict, and they laugh. 

Harry is a good roommate. If he does snore, it’s always gentle and snuffly, normally muffled into the space between his pillow and duvet anyway. He puts his phone on silent and he doesn’t turn the bathroom light on when he needs the loo in the night and he goes to sleep at a reasonable time with a sweet sleepy ‘night night’ that Jan always blows a kiss at him for.

He loves Tottenham more than anyone Jan’s met, and that’s maybe because Jan surrounds himself with players more than fans, and a player’s club is his club but the club isn’t _his_. He’s not sure who he supports anymore, thinks about it sometimes in the shower, wonders if there’s one he loves with that extra inch of heart and decides that it must be something that comes in retirement, when his bones creak too much to raise his knee above a few inches, and the only satisfaction he can find is in a club that exists for him. He asks Toby sometimes, but his unflappable rationality doesn’t interact well with sentimentality. Jan thinks it’s because he doesn’t like to admit he’d run to the ends of the earth for Ajax, even still.

“Can you imagine not playing for Spurs?” Jan asks him, last night in Singapore, sheets sticky to his skin.

Harry breathes out, a sign that he’s thinking it over. Jan waits patiently, playing with the edge of his cover that’s grossly damp. It makes him gag a little, so he peels it away and lets it crumple in a pile in the gap between their beds.

“No.” He says, voice tinged with that edge that means honesty. A little sheepish, a little defiant, a mess of contradictions. The shrug is the sheepish bit. “I know I’ll have to one day.” He reasons. “Will break my heart, but gotta do it, ain’t you?”

It’s a rhetorical question, with anyone else, but Jan can hear the uncertainty, the little question mark tacked onto the end. He wishes it wasn’t so hot so they were sleeping in the same bed like they do. Harry’s a good roommate, but he does wriggle in his sleep. Jan kind of likes that. There’s something endearing about it.

“Maybe not.” Jan mumbles. “Some of the greatest haven’t. Messi. Kind of.”

“Gerrard.” Harry nods and Jan snorts through his nose. The English do always mention him. “Nicholson.”

Jan hums. “You can never say.”

“You must have known you wouldn’t stay at Beerschot forever.” Harry says into the blue light filtered through the window.

“That’s because it was fucking Beerschot, Winksy.” Jan snorts. He’s delighted when Harry giggles too.

“It sounds so funny when you swear.” He chuckles, warmly.

Jan makes a fake noise of affront. “If you’re making fun of my accent, we can no longer be friends.” He says, voice as forlorn as he can force it.

Harry whines, “Don’t you dare!” and Jan wants to kiss the tip of his nose but the sweat slicking his skin has him pinned quite effectively to the mattress. He thinks instead about the strange satisfaction kissing Harry’s freckles gives him, especially that extra dark one on the bridge of his nose, how Harry’s skin is warm and tanned and how he hums at the barest touch, always content. Jan likes that a lot.

They tease each other a little more until Harry’s mumbling drops off into snores, and Jan imagines Harry in a bright red kit and is immediately assaulted by the wrongness of the image, so he tries for another kind of white and maybe he can see that, but it still irks strangely. He imagines himself in scarlet, or blue, or stripes, and finds it just is.

Jan isn’t sure when Harry decided Jan could sideline as his personal stand up comedian, but Toby seems to hold credit for noticing his little obsession before any of them did, and Jan has known Toby for long enough to know his eyes aren’t just beady because that’s his appearance. He accepts it, let’s Toby brag about it when they have their civilised adult best friend dinners together, because he really doesn’t mind.

He doesn’t mind because Harry finds everything he says funny, even when he really isn’t trying to be, and your heart would have to be heavy duty steel not to flutter just a little knowing you can make someone like Harry laugh without even thinking. If Jan shows off a little, makes himself even goofier just for Harry’s benefit, just so he can hear the little voice in Harry’s head saying he’s the coolest person in the world, he can’t be bothered to be sheepish. He’s too old to listen to the niggle that sits at the back of his brain telling him to lay off, or the nagging of his best friend that does the same.

“Poch isn’t playing you.” Harry tells him, curled around him on his settee, staring at the telly playing something neither of them picked. He’s flushed and soft, still shirtless and Jan likes being able to draw circles on his bare skin.

Jan raises an eyebrow. His foot twitches where it’s crossed over the other on the footstool in front of them. He stares at his feet, suddenly understands why Harry makes fun of how long and bony his toes are. Pale, too. He wishes he had socks on.

“And how did you hear that?” Jan asks.

He can feel Harry’s shrug against his chest. It makes the t-shirt he threw on ride up, little sliver of skin above his boxers appearing and, as expected, Harry’s fingers immediately drift across it. He’s ticklish there, right below his belly button, and Harry’s short nails stroking along his skin makes him squirm a little.

“On the grapevine.” Harry yawns. He yelps when Jan uses his body weight to jostle his head against Jan’s chest, and laughs when Jan smacks him upside the head playfully. “Overheard Toby. Some of those accounts on Twitter have caught wind too.”

Jan scoffs. “You _play_ for Spurs, Winksy, why the fuck are you following them?”

“Like to stay updated.” Harry huffs, glowering up at Jan when he openly laughs at him.

“Weirdo.” Jan jibes, flicking Harry on the end of his scrunched up nose.

They stay silent for a few more minutes. Jan writes some words on Harry’s skin, ones he hasn’t been paying attention too and then he wonders if Harry has been, and then he wonders what he’s been saying. He wonders if he’s been sending subliminal messages through his unconscious word tracing along the skin of Harry’s shoulders.

“You deflected.” Harry says finally.

Jan hums, because of course he did. “Well. Yes. It is true.”

“That you deflected or Poch?”

Jan has to stop himself from cuffing the back of his head again so he pinches his skin instead. Harry whines, rubbing a rough hand against the little circle of red where Jan’s nails pinched in.

“Both, smartass.”

“Okay.”

“Why?”

“I am apparently not up to scratch.”

There’s more than a few beats between each response. They’re not looking each other, and Jan really doesn’t mind. There’s nothing crawling around in his stomach making its discomfort known, no blush of embarrassment up his neck. It just simply is, sometimes. Football is football.

“I think that’s bollocks.” Harry mutters. “I think you’re always great. We need you.”

Jan thinks that too. Football is football, and he might not be choking on shame at his drop to the bench, or even yet the stands, but he would be naive to pretend there isn’t an undercurrent of disappointment lying beneath everything. A noise that says he’s not enough and he’s not good and he’s not wanted. Jan wants to feel wanted.

“It’s the gaffer’s decision.” Jan reasons. He squeezes Harry’s side as a thank you. Kisses the top of his head. “I have been off.”

Harry makes a noise of disagreement at the back of his mouth and makes to get up, prepared to launch into an animated defence of Jan’s form and that makes something catch in Jan’s throat. He keeps Harry in place, however, stroking his bare, warm skin soothingly with the pads of his fingers.

Jan thinks about it as he’s brushing his teeth, fingering absently at the marks Harry left across his collarbones (when he’d told him off, Harry had told him impishly he’d picked somewhere below the collar deliberately). There’s a nice ring of pain through his shoulders when he presses into the centre of one that spirals out all purple.

He thinks about how to get better, how to get back in form. He thinks about whether he still cares and he does, of course he does, but it’s stale, almost. There was no Champions League afterglow, mere comedown, brutal drop to reality and it bruised. The excitement that sparked in his blood for months, powered him through those dreadful months in the League, drained in a single 90 minutes. 7 years late, the honeymoon period faded.

He wonders if Poch wants him out. Subtlety fails him quite obviously, and it wouldn’t be the first time. He imagines Toby’s wry sensibility shattering with the news, two decades ignored, and then he thinks about Mousa doing the same to him, and finds that hardens the ache in his heart. Maybe Toby could come with him, wherever he ends up. A package deal, through club and country. Jan very suddenly wants to tell Toby that he loves him, and then snorts into his duvet because Christ, he’s a sentimental fool sometimes.

He doesn’t really think about what Harry would say, but he can see the anxious bite at his bottom lip across the dressing room when he tells the squad the news, and the betrayal reflected in his eyes, too proud to cry, that’d be hidden when he’d beam at Jan and tell him they need him, but someone else does too.

“What the fuck?” Harry screeches. “What the actual fuck, Jan?”

Jan stares at him blankly. He considers snapping at him for disturbing the neighbours but with the distance between houses it’s impossible they’d hear. It would just be a row for the sake of it. Deflecting one row for another.

“Yes?” He asks, shaking his head incredulously.

“Your fucking face.” Harry cries, gesturing wildly in Jan’s direction and Jan does snort then because he had completely forgot.

“Oh. Yeah.”

Harry groans through clenched teeth and marches through the door, feet slamming hard against Jan’s nice new tiled kitchen floor and Jan knows he’s deliberately making himself heavier than he needs to be to prove some odd point. He thinks the point is anger.

“Why didn’t you tell me someone smashed your face in?!” He hisses, maybe to himself, boiling Jan’s kettle and rummaging through drawers for a cloth and ransacking his freezer for a bag of ice.

“Fucking liability sometimes, I swear to god.” He continues, definitely talking to himself this time. Jan just listens amusedly. Harry building up steam is always entertaining, and there’s a warmth flickering in the pit of his stomach that he should probably be ashamed of.

“Fucking 32 years old and still thick as pig shit.” He gripes, pouring too much water into the second mug, the one with the lovehearts he always picks when he comes over. “Never bloody trust you, Jesus wept.”

“Harry, baby.” Jan murmurs fondly. “I’m okay. Please calm down.”

“No!” He shrieks, turning round to glare at him only long enough to watch Jan hold his hands up in acquiesce before he’s back to overaggressively stirring the tea, muttering darkly under his breath. Jan considers filming it but he doesn’t trust this Harry not to lob his phone out the window.

“I just want you to fucking come back to work, I miss you so much, we need you and you’ve got in a fucking fight, Christ, why’d I bother-“

The rest of Harry’s sentence is muffled into Jan’s chest, his lips pressed right over Jan’s heart. The tension bleeds out of him, body falling lax against Jan’s front. Jan shushes him quietly, combing through his hair that must be freshly washed because it’s fluffy and soft and doesn’t catch in his hands all gelled up.

“I don’t know what’s going on.” Harry whispers, drained. “Everything feels wrong.”

Jan rests his cheek on the top of Harry’s head, the side that isn’t bruised. With his hand that isn’t rubbing circles into the small of Harry’s back, he finishes off their tea and shuffles them into the lounge all wrapped up in each other. When Harry reaches under his waistband, it’s more comfort than anything and they come together, soft, easy orgasms that barely require a breath. He apologises tiredly into Jan’s neck, and Jan tells him he doesn’t mind. Harry stroking the bruises puffing up his eye cautiously as they doze in and out of sleep is like a hand around his neck.

“The kid’s obsessed with you.” Toby clicks his tongue. Chris does his funny little laugh and Jan glowers at the two of them. Davinson is barely listening. Jan likes that about him.

Jan shrugs. He scuffs the ground with his studs. Poch has him training with the starting 11s today, and it’s like a sugar rush; not strong enough to really ignite anything but a burst enough of _something_. It feels good.

“You like him, Alderweireld. Just because he’s stealing my affections away from you.”

Toby scoffs and they bump shoulders good-naturedly. He can’t wait to press his studs into the grass and run until the muscles in his thighs scream at him, can’t wait to beat Toby to every ball and tease him for it afterwards. He can’t wait to squeeze Harry’s shoulder before the whistle blows and watch the pink that spreads up his neck, just tickling along his jawline.

Poch claps when he intercepts the ball between Tanguy and Kane, and Harry actually beams at him, actually sticks his thumbs up and Jan’s ears burn with embarrassed fondness. He wants to slather Harry in so much attention he drowns in it, just for making him smile. It takes Dier barging into his shoulder with all the elegance of a ten ton bull to draw his attention away. He knocks the ball out from beneath Sonny’s feet and doesn’t stop for Harry’s cheer. He just smiles, pleased with himself.

“Jan, Jan, Jan!” Harry buzzes, phone right up in his face, Harry’s hidden behind it, laughing delightedly to himself. Dele is leaning against the wall behind him, scoffing. Jan knows the second another player enters the canteen, Dele will demand their company to make fun of the two of them. Harry never seems to care too much.

“That is my name.” Jan says primly. Harry rolls his eyes, still grinning and Jan loves how he can look down at him, how their eye contact is filtered through Harry’s pretty long eyelashes.

Harry leads him to the counter, excitedly prodding at the pesto pasta and then the baked salmon through the glass, asking the nice lady Jan can never remember the name of for potatoes with his lunch and giggling with her when he jokes it’s the closest thing to chips he’s allowed. Jan can feel Dele’s eyes boring into the shoulder he has pressed against Harry’s, and he’s just glad they can be saved the harassment for the dumb, fond smile on his face none of them can see.

“Thank Christ you’re back in the squad, mate.” Harry breathes out, already mumbling through a mouthful of potato dripping salad cream. “Arsenal better be prepared for the spanking they’re gonna get.”

Dele sniggers, nudging Sonny until he joins in. “Big words for a little boy, Winksy.” and Jan trails his foot up Harry’s calf when he just sticks his tongue out, unaffected as ever.

People filter in and out of the canteen and Jan’s missed this, more than he’d expected. The drift he’s been feeling over the last few weeks without even realising seems to have cemented again; pretty strong super glue over a seeping crack. There’s always a careful distance between the rest of the squad and the ones that get dropped, the ones Poch just isn’t feeling that week, and they’re all close - Jan loves them all more than they’re ever going to know - but the closeness that simmers in your chest like comfort doesn’t exist quite the same way.

He’s listening to Sonny, Dele, Serge and Winks argue over Uno, Dele snapping at Winks for dropping a card facedown on the floor and ruining the game, Winks’ bad-tempered snapbacks watched with barely contained laughter from the rest of them. Harry is truly awful at the game, losing time and time again, and every now and again he turns towards Jan with his eyes all wide and shiny. Jan just laughs and waves his hands.

“Come see Ayla.” Toby mutters in his ear when the Uno tournament has reached its climax, teams changing as Dele impatiently exiles those not up to his standards. “She asks after Uncle Jan.”

“She can’t speak, Toby.”

Toby rolls his eyes impatiently. “She can say Mum and Dad and chicken, so actually quite advanced.”

Jan starts giggling and Harry’s ears immediately twitch, glancing up from his phone to grin at Jan before he looks back away, and it’s something small but (Jan has no other word for it) nice. It makes the smile on his face remain long after his giggles recede.

He has to flick his phone onto silent when he’s sat at Toby’s kitchen table, bouncing Ayla on the tabletop so her little socked feet patter across the surface. Harry is regaling him with a story 5 years old and about as long. He’ll read it through when he’s sat in the dark of his car, amongst old socks and empty bottles of Lucozade, Toby waving Ayla’s fat little fist goodbye from the doorway.

“How are you feeling?” Toby asks simply. He’s fiddling with his coffee machine; it’s making a strange clicking noise.

Jan sighs. He blows a raspberry on Ayla’s tummy over her clothes. “Fine, thank you. You?”

Toby fixes him with a warning glare before smacking his fist off the top of the metal. Jan chuckles, Ayla joining in until she’s close to hysterics. Her little bow is slipping out of her hair but Jan doesn’t trust himself to clip it back in.

“Excellent.” Toby says. “What’s Poch said?”

“Nothing. I’m back in the squad.”

Toby nods distractedly. Jan likes their normalcy. He likes that they don’t have to do anything or talk about anything or even have a reason to enjoy each other’s company. He likes that they just exist in each other’s space, laughing and nagging each other, playing pool or football; normal. There’s a comfort in it like hearing Dutch when he walks off the plane or smelling his own laundry powder when he’s been away.

“I won’t be angry with you.” Toby tells him. “If you want to leave, you should. If you want, you need to.”

Jan pulls a face he can’t see but that Ayla finds very amusing. She wraps chubby fingers around the tip of his nose, delighted with the challenge of trying to keep a hold on it. Jan grins at her and she gurgles excitedly.

“I know.” Jan says, because he does know. They’ve known each other long enough for time and distance to dissolve. “I’m not leaving. I could - might. But not right now.”

Toby nods. He understands and Jan likes that more than all of it, more than the coffee machine and the football nets in the garden and Poch handing him the right colour bib. He likes that someone understands, that even when Harry will tilt his head, confused, determined to tell him ‘I get it’, Toby understands.

“We’ve been here forever.” Toby jokes wryly. “You’re running out of time for a new challenge.”

Jan reaches across to smack him round the head. Toby just smacks him back twice as hard with the end of his tea towel, whipping it across Jan’s ribs and he groans.

“You’re not getting any younger either.” Jan reminds him, eyebrows raised.

“Eh.” He shrugs, switches to English. “Come on you Spurs, hey?”

Jan snorts. Come on you Spurs indeed.

It’s sandwiched in between results that make Jan doubt that, more than he has in years, sees him stroking Harry’s hair back from his eyes as he presses into his chest dejected, that Jan’s reminded just why he gives a shit in the first place.

It’s fluid, even when the ball catches under his feet or his legs strain with the pressure his body’s forcing them through. The team clicks, slid into place and Jan watches, even if he doesn’t smile, as Harry clears up ball after ball, feeds one through for Aurier who gets it to Son, angles his foot for a shot into the bottom corner. He doesn’t smile but he shakes his head fondly, ruffles his hair or squeezes his shoulder when he can get close enough and Harry just beams at him, breath burning through his nose, radiating happiness through drips of sweat.

It takes a while for Jan to drag him away, buried under bodies and then bouncing off Son like pinballs in the dressing room, laughing so delightedly with Dele as he stares through his eyelashes and that makes Jan’s blood simmer, skin tight. His jaw sets and he yanks his socks up so aggressively he can hear the elastic snapping and Toby has to ask him why he’s pulling up his kit socks when he should be showering for him to remember that’s the wrong stage of the routine.

Jan’s convinced he’s teasing by the time he’s towelled off his hair. He knows he’s just antsy with adrenaline, a clean win on his first start of the season, desperate to release everything sitting on his skin but Harry is running circles around Dier half-dressed and everything coiling in his stomach is starting to snap.

“Harry?” He asks, incredulous enough he snorts at his own impatience. Chris is tittering away next to him. Jan’s glad he finds some humour in it.

Harry tilts away from Eric, head cocked to the side like he only just realised, lips pink and open dumbly. “Yeah?” He replies dazedly.

Jan laughs and waves his hand, packing the rest of his stuff up, unflattering high-pitched squeak leaving his mouth when he spins back around to Harry pressed right into him, chest to chest, eyes meeting. He can hear Toby cackling in the background and he hopes the indignant grunt he hears is someone smacking the sound out of him.

“I almost scored.” Harry tells him, like Jan wasn’t 20 feet away, watching with fond exasperation.

Jan smiles. Harry’s moved an acceptable distance away. “I do have eyes.”

Harry rolls his eyes but Jan knows he’ll laugh and of course he does, sweet little giggle leaving his mouth. The itch of their win, a clean sheet, actual _success_ burrows right under his skin and he wants to touch, take._ This is how it should work_, he thinks feverishly. _This is the Spurs I want_.

Harry starts pleading before Jan’s even undressed him, needy whining in between kisses that Jan pretends to scoff at but that really heats him from within, skin uncomfortable with the thrill of it. He sucks a bruise into the smoothness of Harry’s shoulder, right where it’ll ache under bag straps and teammates’ eyes, right where Jan can press into when he passes him on the pitch. He scrapes his teeth against it, red and angry and Harry sighs, neck already loose, so easy.

Jan stretches him open slow and deep, fingers buried into him and rubbing relentlessly against that spot. Harry whimpers, tries to thrash away and just fucks himself down harder against his hand, legs shaking as his head tips back against the wall. Jan takes pity and merely nips along his neck as he slides a third finger in, kisses the tip of his nose and his cheekbone and the top of his head as the pink flush staining his cheeks bleeds through his chest.

“Jan.” Harry mumbles, wriggling impatiently on the fingers Jan is still fucking into him. “Want you.”

Jan hums and twists his hand, fourth finger just teasing along his rim and Harry goes still suddenly, rigid caught between the solid weight of Jan’s body and the wall. The noise that leaves his mouth is truly pitiful and Jan feels a tingling wave of heat so hot it hurts. He edges the tip of it in, easy in the slip of too-much lube but Harry sobs, shaking his head.

“Please.” He begs. “Don’t wanna yet.”

Jan’s heart hammers but when he speaks his voice is slow and firm. “No.” He agrees. “You don’t come until I let you.”

Jan fucks him so hard he can never settle, hands grappling restlessly at any bit of him Harry can get to, nails dug into his shoulder or his hair. He complains uselessly that the light switch is digging into his back and they spare a few breathless seconds to laugh imagining the bruise it’s leaving along his spine before Jan just thrusts faster, harder until, with permission, Harry melts against him all whimpers and soft edges and hair in his mouth.

“Fucking hell.” Is the first thing Harry mutters as he unhooks his legs from Jan’s waist. Jan can see his come along Harry’s thigh and his stomach gives a tired flip. Harry’s massaging his back with a grimace. “Gonna be crippled for a bit.”

Jan snorts and ruffles his hair. They shower together, splashing each other with water and squirting shower gel at each other. Jan looks at Harry with his fringe all wet and hanging in his eyes, mouth open in a breathless grin, looking up at him with so much of everything Jan feels pride. It’s a relief, the entire day, an affirmation of why he cares. Reminds him why he’s still here, under a duvet in London, and he’ll never tell anyone, Toby can _never_ find out, but some of it might be to do with the way Harry, fluffy damp hair on white pillows, relays the whole game like Jan wasn’t even there, animatedly and excitedly, like nothing in life means as much to him as football does.

Jan thinks about it a lot. He thinks about why he plays, why he even got here in the first place. He thinks about why he should stay and why he should go and why he should care more and why he wishes he had a club, a _thing_ like Harry does, that sings in his heart and bites at his tear ducts and feels like hearing Dutch after walking off the plane and smelling his washing powder after he’s been away. Jan feels slow, like he’s moving through the motions, and he’s not sure he loves Tottenham the same anymore, but Harry makes him want to try.


End file.
